Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 65, was also found guilty of inciting rape at the
UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda,
which is prosecuting those accused of orchestrating the killings of more
than 800,000 people in Rwanda in 1994.
She stood accused alongside her son, Arsene Ntahobali, 41, who was a student
at the time of the massacres. In the dock beside his mother, he was also
convicted of similar charges yesterday. The pair were sentenced to life in
prison.
As a senior member of the Hutu government which planned the genocide,
Nyiramasuhuko took part in cabinet meetings where decisions were made on how
to exterminate the Tutsi minority in Rwanda.
She was put in charge of the southern region of Butare where she was born and
grew up, and arranged loyal soldiers and militia fighters to search out
Tutsis to kill.
The massacres in Butare started several weeks later than elsewhere in Rwanda,
because the area had a large Tutsi population, a Tutsi mayor and a long
history of ethnic harmony.
Tutsis fled there from the rest of the country once the genocide had started,
thinking they would be safer.
But once Nyiramasuhuko took charge, she personally ordered Tutsis who had fled
to local government offices for safety to be loaded onto pickup trucks and
driven to the town's outskirts to be killed.
Later, she ordered men from the Interahamwe militia, thugs from the Hutu tribe
who carried out the killings, to rape Tutsi women and girls.
Her son took part in those rapes, and also ran a roadblock outside a hotel in
Butare town which was described as "one of the most terrifying" in
the region.
Men, women and children were seized from there and taken to woods outside
town, next to a church school, and assassinated.
"The evidence presented by these survivorsâ ¦is among the worst
encountered by this Chamber," the three-judge panel at the
Tanzania-based court said in its judgment
"It paints a clear picture of unfathomable depravity and sadism."
Nyiramasuhuko and her son were indicted with four other men who all held
senior political positions in the region at the time of the killings.
All were found guilty of a variety of charges " including genocide for
all but one of them" and given sentences between 25 years and life.
"We are very happy to hear that she was been convicted and jailed, she
deserved it," said Janvier Folongo, executive secretary of Ibuka, an
organisation of genocide survivors in Rwanda.
"But at the same time, we cannot celebrate because there are many people
accused of these crimes who have still not been arrested. We have a long way
to go still."
